Chile’s lithium provides profit to the billionaires but exhausts the land and the people
3 Aug 2022
THE Atacama salt flat in northern Chile, which stretches 1,200 square miles, is the largest source of lithium in the world. We are standing on a bluff, looking over la gran fosa, the great pit that sits at the southern end of the flat, which is shielded from public view.
COP30 must make good on past climate commitments
24 Jul 2025
By Jacinda Ardern, Carlos Lopes, and Laurence Tubiana | COMMENT: COP presidencies tend to seek fresh agreements and ambitious initiatives, but when the celebrations are over, implementation often falls short. That is why Brazil’s COP30 presidency must eschew flashy results in favour of pragmatic pathways to deliver on past agreements.
Brazil’s Congress passes ‘devastation bill’ in major environmental setback
21 Jul 2025
In the early hours of July 17, the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies approved a bill to ease environmental licensing, which NGOs and environmentalists have dubbed the “devastation bill” and consider the nation’s most significant environmental setback in nearly 40 years.
Illegal loggers profit from Brazil’s carbon credit projects
17 Jul 2025
How a system designed to protect the world’s biggest rainforest is funding businesses with a track record of illegal deforestation.
Over 90 arrests made in global crackdown on environmental crime in the Amazon Basin
14 Jul 2025
Assets worth over $64 million were seized and 94 people arrested as part of a multinational law enforcement operation targeting environmental crime in the Amazon Basin.
In Latin America, the energy transition stirs a rise in human rights lawsuits
8 Jul 2025
A new report shows that more than half of the 95 energy transition-related lawsuits recorded globally since 2009 took place in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Countries must protect human right to a stable climate, court rules
7 Jul 2025
Costa Rica-based inter-American court of human rights says states have obligation to respond to climate change.
‘We are perilously close to the point of no return’: climate scientist on Amazon rainforest’s future
1 Jul 2025
Carlos Nobre, who has fought for decades to save the rainforest, says up to 70% of it could be lost if a tipping point is reached.
Pará’s Amazon forest carbon deal in doubt as prosecutors move to block it
13 Jun 2025
The Brazilian state’s contract with foreign governments and companies has run into trouble over concerns it was premature and agreed without consulting Indigenous communities.
Ahead of UN climate talks, Brazil fast-tracks oil and highway projects that threaten the Amazon
12 Jun 2025
Months before hosting the U.N.'s first climate talks held in the Amazon, Brazil is fast-tracking a series of controversial decisions that undercut President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s lofty environmental rhetoric and show widening divisions within his cabinet.
Brazil’s civil society pledges tested as COP30 climate summit approaches
9 Jun 2025
Hopes of real civil influence at November’s UN negotiations in Belém are being undermined by costs, bureaucracy and mixed messaging.
